I think it would be more rare in head and neck than say if you radiated the leg bones or hips where most of the body's marrow resides - but anytime you radiate bones and thus the marrow - you can kill off the cells inside. And, when they are trying to regenerate - there is a greater chance of mutation in one which can cause the whole chain reaction and lead to leukemia. That is what I understand to be the way it works. Please correct me if someone else knows the answer to be different.

That being said - if case requires radiation - I don't think the doctors would forgo it b/c of this very minimal risk. If your case was questionable whether radiation would help or not - then it might be a factor in the decision process.

I believe there is a similar slight risk for chemotherapy as Chemo generally kills off living cells and most do greatly affect the bone marrow - but if you require that - then the benefit far outweighs the minimal risk.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Because my husband's mother doesn't have insurance, we're still waiting for those biopsy results from the ENT. It's a full week already. The one good thing that my MIL's diagnosis did do, was cause our Aunt Ro to go back to her doctors for a full check up. (Remember she had foolishly sworn off doctors because of her depression?) Aunt Ro has some type of nodules on the newly reconstructed floor of her mouth, so she's having a biopsy done on July 11th. Two in one family is just overload and very hard to deal with.

The only thing I can think of besides their family's strong predisposition to cancer in general, is that fact that neither took very good care of their eating habits, health habits etc. and both live on the east end of Long Island and get their water supply from Brookhaven, the place where they found toxic chemicals in the ground water a few years ago. I suspect that the "modern" world we live in has everything to do with it.

I'll keep everyone posted,
Lisa S.D.